Android 13: A Quality-of-Life Update with New Features and Security Improvements

The latest update to Android, version 13, has been released, bringing with it several new features and improvements. One of the most significant changes is the ability to turn off screen-on mode for certain applications. This can be accessed by going into the settings, then apps, and then special app access, where users can scroll all the way to the bottom and toggle on or off the ability for specific applications to turn their screens on whenever they want.

In addition to this change, Android 13 introduces several new security and privacy features. One of these is the requirement for media applications to ask for separate audio, video, and image permissions. This change aims to provide users with more control over the data that their apps have access to. Another new feature is the individually managed notification permissions, which allow users to customize which notifications they receive from specific applications.

Users can also manage these permissions by going to settings, then privacy, then permission manager for photos, videos, audio, and notification permissions. Furthermore, Android 13 includes a revised scope storage system, which aims to better protect user data. However, this change may not be ideal for all users, as it may limit access to certain files and folders.

Unfortunately, the loophole that file browsers were using to view some files in internal storage has been closed in Android 13. This means that users can no longer use file browsers to see contents of the data or ob folders under the android directory. While this change may be seen as a positive step in protecting user privacy, it also limits access to certain files and folders.

The update also includes several quality-of-life improvements, such as updates to the Unicode library support, improved custom quick tile support, native HDR video support in the Camera 2 API, a low latency audio mode, and changes to the camera 2 API that allow OEMs to optimize the camera for streaming video online. Additionally, Android 13 provides improved support for tablets and foldables, as well as new features for enterprise users.

One notable feature is the removal of accessibility access to side-loaded applications to prevent malware issues. Apps are now required to ask for permission to view logcats every time they need it, and a new permission for body sensor data will help protect user privacy even further. Users can read more about these changes on the Android Developers website.

In terms of performance, the update brings several improvements, including over 150 bug fixes, which should result in smoother animations and better overall performance. The Pixel 6 series runs better on Android 13 than Android 12 did, with smoother animations and a generally better user experience.

Overall, while Android 13 is not as revolutionary as some of its predecessors, it brings several new features and improvements that aim to enhance the user experience. Whether or not these changes are enough to make the update feel significant will depend on individual preferences and needs.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhello again ladies and gentlemen i'm joe handy from android authority and today we're going to check out the android 13 full release in all of its glory fasten your seat belts because we have a lot to talk about as usual let's start with the visual changes there weren't many major changes in android 13 but android 12 introduced some huge changes with material u so we didn't expect a massive revamp so soon that said material u did get some updates and google kind of tightened up the ui a little bit overall let's start with the new theme elements material u now includes new palettes including tonal vibrant expressive spritz and a couple of others you can find this stuff in the wallpaper and style section my pixel 6 here has 12 to 16 wallpaper color options and then 16 more basic color options with the last few being dual tones that's a lot more options than i had in android 12. themed icons are also included in the material u tweaks this was available in a limited capacity in android 12 but it has been improved to automatically theme your icons based on your wallpaper it's not a massive difference but it is there my only issue with it is that it doesn't work on every icon at least not on my pixel 6. moving on android 13 changes the look of the photo picker when sending an image or video via an app the new function not only looks different but prevents applications from seeing all of your photos unless you expressly select them adding a bit of privacy to the mix this is available as low as android 11 so you won't need an update 13 in order to see it but it wasn't available on my phone at launch so you may have to wait a bit for it the media player also got a slight revamp we still have that squiggly line that looks like one half of the ingredients required to make a baby along with that comes a larger volume bar for easier volume control that you can access by clicking the media output button google also made this design ubiquitous across the phone and tablet ui so it'll look the same no matter what kind of device you're using google also decided to tweak some things for people who are going to bed this is a two-step process the first is you have to enable bedtime in the digital well-being app there you can find a new feature to dim your wallpaper so you're not blasting yourself with bright colors as you're trying to go to bed once you have the bedtime function set up you can then go into the dark theme or dark mode settings and have it activate automatically at bedtime this along with the dimming wallpaper are designed so that you don't blind yourself with your phone in the middle of the night there were some smaller changes as well the navigation line pill bar thing at the bottom of the screen is slightly thicker than it was before tablet and foldable devices now get an app drawer in the taskbar like you see on phones there is also now a revamped profile switcher and multi-user ui along with some other new animations a different lock screen clock and some other minor tweaks android 13 included a few more features than some more recent releases of android which we like because it gives us more stuff to play with let's talk about those features right now let's start with the per app language preferences this is accessible by going into the settings and then system languages and inputs and then finally app languages this is a huge feature for multilingual speakers and lets you view applications and languages that are most comfortable for you apps have to opt in to do this so not every application is natively available however we expect that most will be sooner rather than later there is a new qr scan or quick toggle it's pretty easy to use simply press it and then point your camera at a qr code to scan it it works pretty quickly in our testing however some oems like samsung have had this as part of their camera natively so there are faster solutions out there still it's not a complicated feature and this is how it works android 13 revamps the clipboard editor in a pretty big way now when you add something to the clipboard you get an overlay in the bottom left corner of the screen similar to when you take screenshots you can also edit what you copied in case it came out wrong the os will also auto wipe your clipboard after a period of time so you don't have to worry about what's in there additionally android 13 includes better control for active services running in the background as you can see here when i click on google play music to play you can see that it says one active app and if i click on that it'll show me youtube music this is a small but helpful tweak to get things closed out quickly if you don't need them and as you can see i hit the close button and youtube music is now gone game dashboard received some love in android 13 as well and android 12 had existed but it was only available on pixel devices now many more devices should get the game dashboard feature with android 13. additionally the android 13 version adds an fps selector for some games unfortunately only the games that include the feature will be listed and none of my games were among those games so i had some trouble showing you how it works you can enable game dashboard by going into settings then google then game dashboard to enable it there but you do need google play services version 22.30 first otherwise it will not show up some smaller new features include standardized brightness settings for flashlight brightness but it is only available in applications right now also supported phones can now natively switch between fhd plus and qhd plus but it is only available on devices with a high enough resolution to begin with there were some other smaller features but we'll talk about them in the other sections android 13 has a lot of under the hood changes that you don't see but are actually there this is usually the most boring part of the video but i'll do my best to breeze through these without droning on for too long android 13 now officially supports bluetooth le so folks with bluetooth le devices can officially take advantage of it additionally bluetooth along with ultra wideband and a few others have become project mainline modules that can be updated through the google play store hopefully that means new bluetooth stuff will be adopted a little more quickly android runtime or art received a little bit of love as per the norm the improvements decrease memory use increase speed and it reduces the frequency that the os will kill off background tasks fast pair a feature that helps you seamlessly connect with some bluetooth devices is now natively built right into the android 13 os and it will work on any phone running it this is already kind of there on some devices anyway but now it's standardized some languages like japanese and burmese and others will now render to be more easy to read and look better in the process android 13 also now supports midi 2.0 along with spatial audio with head tracking spatial audio has to be implemented by the oem so it's not available on all phones you'll have to check your phone to see if there is support app developers can now let you control smart home gadgets without unlocking your phone on this pixel 6 it shows up as a house icon on the home screen in the bottom left corner and it goes straight to your smart home stuff you can find the setting under settings then display then lock screen and it's called show device controls you'll see more support for this as app developers add it to their applications another change is the ability to stop an app's ability from turning your screen on when it wants to you can access these new permissions by going into the settings then apps and then special app access and scroll all the way to the bottom turn it on or off for whichever applications you want from there and those applications will no longer be able to turn your phone screen on whenever they want to some other smaller stuff includes updates to the unicode library support for clr version 1 fonts and system emoji improved custom quick tile support native hdr video support in the camera 2 api a low latency audio mode and changes to the camera 2 api now allow oems to optimize the camera for the purposes of streaming video online on places like twitch there is also improved support for tablets and foldables along with some new features for enterprise users if that was listed off too quickly or you want to learn more you can find literally everything i just talked about along with some more stuff on the android developers website android 13 introduces several new security and privacy features although most of them qualify as quality of life changes rather than brand new things but we'll go over them nevertheless apps are now going to ask for a variety of new permissions for example media applications now have to ask for audio video and image permissions separately although some may still ask for them all at once as you see here additionally every application has to individually ask for notification permissions you can also manage these permissions by going to settings then privacy then permission manager for photos videos audio and notification permissions on a negative note the loophole that file browsers were using to see some folders in your internal storage was closed in android 13. from now on you can't use the file browser to see files in the data or ob folders under the android directory as you see here i think this is a bad decision because i should be able to look in there if i want to nevertheless scope storage is now finally functioning as google intended for better or for worse there were a couple of rumored features that didn't seem to make it into the final release the first was a combined security and privacy section in the settings that i personally was looking forward to and you can find screenshots for it online if it did make it to android 13 it didn't make it onto my installation for some reason and this is actually the full release that i'm shooting with here additionally the seven day view on the privacy dashboard doesn't seem to be here either although we may see that one later on as well google added some other small things including removing accessibility access to side loaded applications to prevent malware issues apps are now required to ask for permission to view your logcats every time they need it and a new permission for body sensor data will help protect your privacy even more you can read more about all of those things on the android developers website linked in the video description below overall it didn't take a brain surgeon to predict how android 13 was going to go android 12 introduced some truly massive changes and android 13 is kind of just tightening everything up while introducing some decent quality of life changes there are some new things here and there but most of them feel like extensions of what's already there like the new notification permissions others still feel like corrections for long ago mistakes for example apps looking for nearby wi-fi devices no longer have to ask for your location permission of course we like that change and we're not trash talking it at all but you kind of see what i'm talking about it's mostly quality of life stuff and nothing too terribly serious still i feel like android 13 runs better on my pixel 6 than android 12 did animations feel smoother and there are some more of them google boasted over 150 bug fixes with this final android 13 release so it definitely feels a lot better than the betas or the previews ever did in any case this is a good quality update with a lot of good stuff that helps keep the os feeling fresh however like many more recent android releases not including 12 this amounts to a fairly minor update in the grand scheme of things of course at the pace google is going we're gonna see the android 14 developer previews before too long and this whole process is gonna start all over again so as per tradition let's end this video with the android 13 easter egg go to the settings menu and then about phone from there make your way to and then tap on the android version field like you always do to reveal a clock turn the hands to one o'clock or 1300 military time to make a bunch of bubbles appear long press any of the bubbles to make some emoji show up and then long press again to change up the emoji that are displayed and that about does it for this one folks if you liked this video you know what to do and if not you still know what to do check the resources in the video description for more information and as always thanks for watching everybody and have yourselves a wonderful dayhello again ladies and gentlemen i'm joe handy from android authority and today we're going to check out the android 13 full release in all of its glory fasten your seat belts because we have a lot to talk about as usual let's start with the visual changes there weren't many major changes in android 13 but android 12 introduced some huge changes with material u so we didn't expect a massive revamp so soon that said material u did get some updates and google kind of tightened up the ui a little bit overall let's start with the new theme elements material u now includes new palettes including tonal vibrant expressive spritz and a couple of others you can find this stuff in the wallpaper and style section my pixel 6 here has 12 to 16 wallpaper color options and then 16 more basic color options with the last few being dual tones that's a lot more options than i had in android 12. themed icons are also included in the material u tweaks this was available in a limited capacity in android 12 but it has been improved to automatically theme your icons based on your wallpaper it's not a massive difference but it is there my only issue with it is that it doesn't work on every icon at least not on my pixel 6. moving on android 13 changes the look of the photo picker when sending an image or video via an app the new function not only looks different but prevents applications from seeing all of your photos unless you expressly select them adding a bit of privacy to the mix this is available as low as android 11 so you won't need an update 13 in order to see it but it wasn't available on my phone at launch so you may have to wait a bit for it the media player also got a slight revamp we still have that squiggly line that looks like one half of the ingredients required to make a baby along with that comes a larger volume bar for easier volume control that you can access by clicking the media output button google also made this design ubiquitous across the phone and tablet ui so it'll look the same no matter what kind of device you're using google also decided to tweak some things for people who are going to bed this is a two-step process the first is you have to enable bedtime in the digital well-being app there you can find a new feature to dim your wallpaper so you're not blasting yourself with bright colors as you're trying to go to bed once you have the bedtime function set up you can then go into the dark theme or dark mode settings and have it activate automatically at bedtime this along with the dimming wallpaper are designed so that you don't blind yourself with your phone in the middle of the night there were some smaller changes as well the navigation line pill bar thing at the bottom of the screen is slightly thicker than it was before tablet and foldable devices now get an app drawer in the taskbar like you see on phones there is also now a revamped profile switcher and multi-user ui along with some other new animations a different lock screen clock and some other minor tweaks android 13 included a few more features than some more recent releases of android which we like because it gives us more stuff to play with let's talk about those features right now let's start with the per app language preferences this is accessible by going into the settings and then system languages and inputs and then finally app languages this is a huge feature for multilingual speakers and lets you view applications and languages that are most comfortable for you apps have to opt in to do this so not every application is natively available however we expect that most will be sooner rather than later there is a new qr scan or quick toggle it's pretty easy to use simply press it and then point your camera at a qr code to scan it it works pretty quickly in our testing however some oems like samsung have had this as part of their camera natively so there are faster solutions out there still it's not a complicated feature and this is how it works android 13 revamps the clipboard editor in a pretty big way now when you add something to the clipboard you get an overlay in the bottom left corner of the screen similar to when you take screenshots you can also edit what you copied in case it came out wrong the os will also auto wipe your clipboard after a period of time so you don't have to worry about what's in there additionally android 13 includes better control for active services running in the background as you can see here when i click on google play music to play you can see that it says one active app and if i click on that it'll show me youtube music this is a small but helpful tweak to get things closed out quickly if you don't need them and as you can see i hit the close button and youtube music is now gone game dashboard received some love in android 13 as well and android 12 had existed but it was only available on pixel devices now many more devices should get the game dashboard feature with android 13. additionally the android 13 version adds an fps selector for some games unfortunately only the games that include the feature will be listed and none of my games were among those games so i had some trouble showing you how it works you can enable game dashboard by going into settings then google then game dashboard to enable it there but you do need google play services version 22.30 first otherwise it will not show up some smaller new features include standardized brightness settings for flashlight brightness but it is only available in applications right now also supported phones can now natively switch between fhd plus and qhd plus but it is only available on devices with a high enough resolution to begin with there were some other smaller features but we'll talk about them in the other sections android 13 has a lot of under the hood changes that you don't see but are actually there this is usually the most boring part of the video but i'll do my best to breeze through these without droning on for too long android 13 now officially supports bluetooth le so folks with bluetooth le devices can officially take advantage of it additionally bluetooth along with ultra wideband and a few others have become project mainline modules that can be updated through the google play store hopefully that means new bluetooth stuff will be adopted a little more quickly android runtime or art received a little bit of love as per the norm the improvements decrease memory use increase speed and it reduces the frequency that the os will kill off background tasks fast pair a feature that helps you seamlessly connect with some bluetooth devices is now natively built right into the android 13 os and it will work on any phone running it this is already kind of there on some devices anyway but now it's standardized some languages like japanese and burmese and others will now render to be more easy to read and look better in the process android 13 also now supports midi 2.0 along with spatial audio with head tracking spatial audio has to be implemented by the oem so it's not available on all phones you'll have to check your phone to see if there is support app developers can now let you control smart home gadgets without unlocking your phone on this pixel 6 it shows up as a house icon on the home screen in the bottom left corner and it goes straight to your smart home stuff you can find the setting under settings then display then lock screen and it's called show device controls you'll see more support for this as app developers add it to their applications another change is the ability to stop an app's ability from turning your screen on when it wants to you can access these new permissions by going into the settings then apps and then special app access and scroll all the way to the bottom turn it on or off for whichever applications you want from there and those applications will no longer be able to turn your phone screen on whenever they want to some other smaller stuff includes updates to the unicode library support for clr version 1 fonts and system emoji improved custom quick tile support native hdr video support in the camera 2 api a low latency audio mode and changes to the camera 2 api now allow oems to optimize the camera for the purposes of streaming video online on places like twitch there is also improved support for tablets and foldables along with some new features for enterprise users if that was listed off too quickly or you want to learn more you can find literally everything i just talked about along with some more stuff on the android developers website android 13 introduces several new security and privacy features although most of them qualify as quality of life changes rather than brand new things but we'll go over them nevertheless apps are now going to ask for a variety of new permissions for example media applications now have to ask for audio video and image permissions separately although some may still ask for them all at once as you see here additionally every application has to individually ask for notification permissions you can also manage these permissions by going to settings then privacy then permission manager for photos videos audio and notification permissions on a negative note the loophole that file browsers were using to see some folders in your internal storage was closed in android 13. from now on you can't use the file browser to see files in the data or ob folders under the android directory as you see here i think this is a bad decision because i should be able to look in there if i want to nevertheless scope storage is now finally functioning as google intended for better or for worse there were a couple of rumored features that didn't seem to make it into the final release the first was a combined security and privacy section in the settings that i personally was looking forward to and you can find screenshots for it online if it did make it to android 13 it didn't make it onto my installation for some reason and this is actually the full release that i'm shooting with here additionally the seven day view on the privacy dashboard doesn't seem to be here either although we may see that one later on as well google added some other small things including removing accessibility access to side loaded applications to prevent malware issues apps are now required to ask for permission to view your logcats every time they need it and a new permission for body sensor data will help protect your privacy even more you can read more about all of those things on the android developers website linked in the video description below overall it didn't take a brain surgeon to predict how android 13 was going to go android 12 introduced some truly massive changes and android 13 is kind of just tightening everything up while introducing some decent quality of life changes there are some new things here and there but most of them feel like extensions of what's already there like the new notification permissions others still feel like corrections for long ago mistakes for example apps looking for nearby wi-fi devices no longer have to ask for your location permission of course we like that change and we're not trash talking it at all but you kind of see what i'm talking about it's mostly quality of life stuff and nothing too terribly serious still i feel like android 13 runs better on my pixel 6 than android 12 did animations feel smoother and there are some more of them google boasted over 150 bug fixes with this final android 13 release so it definitely feels a lot better than the betas or the previews ever did in any case this is a good quality update with a lot of good stuff that helps keep the os feeling fresh however like many more recent android releases not including 12 this amounts to a fairly minor update in the grand scheme of things of course at the pace google is going we're gonna see the android 14 developer previews before too long and this whole process is gonna start all over again so as per tradition let's end this video with the android 13 easter egg go to the settings menu and then about phone from there make your way to and then tap on the android version field like you always do to reveal a clock turn the hands to one o'clock or 1300 military time to make a bunch of bubbles appear long press any of the bubbles to make some emoji show up and then long press again to change up the emoji that are displayed and that about does it for this one folks if you liked this video you know what to do and if not you still know what to do check the resources in the video description for more information and as always thanks for watching everybody and have yourselves a wonderful day\n"